Keith: Take a look at the following article by Chuck Lapin. I have known that natural gas and MTBE were bad since about 1980. Do we get heard? No! Only the extreme environmentalists and their partners in the government. Richard
TOXICOLOGIST 'APPALLED' AT IGNORING CNG RISK. Diesel Fuel News, April 16, 2001 By: Jack Peckham One of California's top industry toxicologists who has been involved in the diesel "toxic emissions" issues for more than a decade says he's "appalled" by a recent green-group study that selectively attacks diesel emissions for supposed school bus "cancer threats." Charles Lapin, former Arco Senior Toxicologist, now a private consultant to various clean-diesel technology promoters including International Truck & Engine, points out that the NRDC/CCA study (see Diesel Fuel News 2/19/2001, p7) used only one of the four test buses for health-risk calculations, instead of averaging the emissions. The worst-case 1986 bus used for the calculation "showed signs of disrepair and should not have been used to calculate risks," Lapin said. What's more, the risk estimates used methodologies not recognized by U.S. E.P.A. "This is a political rehash of earlier NRDC dump-diesel statements," Lapin told Diesel Fuel News. "As a toxicologist, the part I find troubling is not just the health effects calculation per se. The main thing that concerns me is that when you present data, then you don't call something a 'significant risk' unless it's statistically significant." "Even using the study's PM exposure calculation for this obsolete-technology, possibly defective school bus -- two hours/day, 180/days/year, for 10 years --that adds up to less than 0.6% of a child's assumed 70-year, 600,000 hour lifetime," Lapin points out. "That's really just a background risk" for cancer, he said, rather than a statistically significant risk. "Even if there's a tiny but potential risk, then the 'greens' are very selective in employing the 'precautionary principle' often used by environmental advocates, regulatory agencies and many industries," he said. Revoking Principals "It's been revoked in their minds for CNG," (Compressed Natural Gas) Lapin said. "University of California at Riverside published data two years ago analyzing CNG vehicle exhaust and found it contains PAH's (Poly Aromatic Hydrocarbons). CNG PM has carcinogens. That's a scary thing, because for a given weight of a particle -- one microgram of diesel PM and one microgram of CNG PM -- CNG has a higher percentage of PAH on a weight basis than diesel PM. So if we're comparing the two vehicles on an emissions weight basis, the CNG vehicle will have more carcinogens attached to PM than the diesel vehicle. The data has been there for two years and its being ignored." While some scientists suspect that lube oil PM could be a key source of PAH in CNG exhaust, other PAH's are formed by condensation of lighter CNG combustion products, "so maybe it's not [just] lubes," Lapin said. By contrast, a lot of the diesel soot PM is inert elemental carbon. The typically smaller size of CNG PM also ought to bother the "greens," because "the finer the [emissions] mist, the greater the surface area [of PM] and the greater the chance for a carcinogen to travel into the cell," he said. "People in the business of promoting and protecting public health should investigate that first before tilting toward one technology," he said. "I'm just appalled by the CNG tilt, and I'm not the only one." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get your FREE credit report with a FREE CreditCheck Monitoring Service trial http://us.click.yahoo.com/ACHqaB/bQ8CAA/ySSFAA/FGYolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Please do NOT send "unsubscribe" messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
